November 15, 2007
Here's how you know your local police force has too much time on its hands:According to the Telegraph, cops in Amsterdam are planning to arrest five teens for stealing virtual furniture from other players rooms in Habbo Hotel, a popular online game slash social networking site.
The investigators believe the Habbo bust represents a first in online law enforcement.
No doubt.
A police spokesman said the stolen items were valued at about US$1,400:
We are trying to bring charges of theft. It is a little difficult and new. There has not yet been a judgment in a case like this. The furniture may not be physical objects but because it represents a certain value we think theft is involved.
The suspects apparently obtained control of the items by conning other Habbo residents out of the login information.
GP: Is this really a case for law enforcement? Can't the Sulake Corp., which operates Habbo Hotel, deal with the griefing and restore the virtual items to the proper accounts? Is there no real crime in Amsterdam these days?
Comments
Re: Dutch Cops Take Down Habbo Hotel Furniture Thieves
Really some of the hotels have such exquiste furniture that let alones thevies hotel guest too want to take somethings back home. I really ask your people how many of you have taken home the hotel towels from the hotel room for your own use. Frankly I have once so surely we do that at times. May be a soft memory pillow as well.
Re: Dutch Cops Take Down Habbo Hotel Furniture Thieves
Well,
if theyre Conned out of theur login information for being dip shits, then no- these people shouldnt be arrested. if one persons all "hey! gimmie ur pass and ill do a voucher on ur account" and the other ones like "OKAY!" and theyre robbed, thats just plain idiotic.
if he case is phishing, then laugh it up. "Go here for freee coins!" <--- obvious bull shit, right?
And if people are truely getting arrested for this nonesence, they DO have too much time. Sure Sulake wont return shit or care (and they dont), but thats the risk you take when u put money online. frankley, in the terms of use, they need to put a waiver of consent that they might be hacked due to insufficiant brain compasity.
All you gotta to is not go to any site ANYONE tells you to on habbo, dont give out information (no matter how charming a person may be), and dont be a bitch to anyone (because thats when anonymous phishes you and ur fucked up the ass :P)
-Vivian
[i]The pool is closed[/i] - fixed.
i understand this case was about phishing and conning the victims, but this case reminds me of the secondlife "thefts" which end in court cases. if you can be famous in a virtual world dont you also have a right to be infamous?
However, it appears as if the guys here just stole the furniture and put it in their own rooms, something that the admins of the "game" would be able to reverse and then ban the offenders.
Then again, the techniques they used (phishing, social engineering) could just as easily have been used to try and get credit card or other information from people, so perhaps it's good they were caught now before they ever got a chance to escalate to more serious fraud and theft.
This might lead to punishments for in-game theft of items. While that seems a bit silly, considering time put in to get those things, or pay for them only to have it taken, I figure something should happen besides a slap on the wrist.
Though as long as this doesn't lead to cops busting down 13 year olds' doors because they rolled 'Need' on that Epic, I'm sure it won't get out of hand.
Or maybe a cop was one of the people who got "their stuffs thiefed".
lol
I'd say yes, because in essence it was a case of phishing. They couldn't have acquired the items without stealing login information.
If you're going to make an online game for kids, why would you be stupid enough to have money involved? I really can't blame a 10-13 year old for being stupid enough to click a link in an email. Seems to me like Habbo's partly to blame, and if they really cared about their "customers" (they still have the $1,400, don't they?) they would give the items back and ban the offenders, passing the information off to the police afterwards. The fact remains that there will obviously need to be proof of the alleged phishing and social engineering before the police can do anything.
Well that's how the US justice system (is supposed to) work, don't know about Amsterdam.
Hmm, cops here go to coffee shops to eat donuts.
Over there do they go to coffee shops to eat donuts AND get blazed?
:D
Makes me wonder: single pieces of Furni in Habbo are quite cheap - how many chairs can you actually put in a room??
I think that d.evl.oper's approach is the one to take.
And, quite frankly, account pishing is very common indeed, so why do people still fall for it? Hacking for $5800 furniture ain't gonna cut it, especially if you /are/ going to get caught like that.
Most of the Habbo population are young adults looking for sex anyway, they shouldn't fall for this. And if they do, then they deserve it.
P.S. : Who do actually buy furniture in Habbo Hotel or thing like that? The Sims are there for you man.
Fortunately none of our countries take the attitude you just displayed regarding people deserving to be a victim of crime. You fancy living in a country where an elderly person who lets a stranger into their home and gets robbed, or a girl who gets date raped while wearing a miniskirt gets told 'You were asking for it, tough shit'?. I know I dont.
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
Random Tower: Game News and Commentary
Seriously though, why are police getting involved in such a minor thing?
This type of thing is the eventual outcome of giving the state a legal monopoly of force. As you remove the ability and incentive from the public to practice self-determination, it exponentially breeds complacency and increased reliance on the state to intervene in any perceived wrongs. Then, when the only tool left in your toolbox is a hammer (police force), every problem begins to look like a nail.
Have you tried putting yourself into their shoes? Seriously, how would you feel if someone stole from you something you paid for? It doesn't matter if it is virtual or not, the "victims" paid for the stuff.
GP: I'm not condoning the theft. I am suggesting it's a ridiculous waste of police resources and could easily be handled by the Habbo operator...
This is identity theft, not property theft, and I hope they charge them as thus. If it was charged as property theft, we'd all be screwed. I'd be charged for theft, larceny, murder, assault, and all kinds of things if you could charge people for video game actions.
However, I found GP's aside on the story to be dangerously flippant. It seems to assume that virtual property can have so little real world value that stealing it cannot be a "real crime."
In some cases, we all agree that virtual property -- those "1s and 0s" -- do indeed have real world value. When a person goes to Best Buy and spends $60 on an Xbox 360 game, he isn't really buying a plastic disc in a case. He is buying the right to use the game code stored on the plastic disc -- those 1s and 0s. Pretty much every EULA ever confirms this point of view, even if it's not exactly the way we think about buying games when we go to the store.
If the 1s and 0s on the plastic disc can have real-word value, why not the 1's and 0s on a social networking server? Again, I am not sure why anyone would pay $1,400 for a virtual couch, but if he did, why shouldn't his property rights be legally protected like any one else's?
Certainly, there is a lot left for society to figure out about virtual property ownership in regard to traditional property law, but one of the ways these things get figured out is through test cases like this one.
If GP wants to argue that virtual property in Habbo has no real-world value, or that it can't legally be owned by players, that's fine -- that would add to the discussion and raise new considerations. But the unbridled relativism of dismissing the entire case as 'too minor a crime for police to investigate' is unfair. Should police ignore that fact I steal bikes just because other people are stealing cars?
I don't see how your random call for anarchy applies in this case. When it comes to enforcing laws established by the government, are you saying the government SHOULDN'T have a legal monopoly on force?
Are you suggesting that we all should correct any perceived wrongs individually, without consideration to the precedents and procedures our societies have established through legislation? If everyone has to carry around his own hammer all the time, everything ends up looking like a nail to someone.
Frankly, I don't really care who wields the hammer, so long as I have my due share of 'architectural input.' Those who take part in drafting the blueprints get to help decide where the nails go and where they don't.
"copy"... "paste"... duplicated.
The argument is that the items were purchased for roughly $1400 US REAL currency.
The fact is, that movies, music, TV shows, books, etc, that are digitized and transmitted over the Internet amount to "copy", "paste", duplicated, as well.
Someone created those electronic items on Habbo Hotel and sold them. Some music, even games, are created and distributed (by online retailers) online as well and only exist in electronic format.
Is there really ANYTHING that would be considered "too small" for IP protection?
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
I’m not condoning the theft. I am suggesting it’s a ridiculous waste of police resources and could easily be handled by the Habbo operator…
I guess it depends on what they're being charged with. Theft of the property, or identity theft.
Personally I couldn't give a rats arse about the furniture theft, but committing fraud to steal login info, that's a lot more serious in my eye.
It doesn't matter what the means of doing so is. If you take $1.5k you deserve to actually be punished.
GP: I don't disagree that those involved need to be dealt with. I do view bringing the police into this as a complete waste of time.
What I said is not that they are "asking for it", they deserved it out of putting money down on the side walk. That is the basic equivalent of what they did, Habbo security is FUBAR and everybody knows it, if they don't they didn't do their research.
I didn't meant that they don't deserve protection and justice, I meant that it was overkill. And that the thieves are pretty stupid in that case since the money can get "relocated" quickly.
Just like if i scammed someone's credit card info for my personal gain, I've scammed someone's login info to steal things that cost actual money/have real world worth. Sure, the admins could reverse it (as far as I know), but it could still be deemed theft, IMHO
Never forget the raid.
...What the hell is the world coming to?
But fraud is fraud. You steal that much from someone, regardless of the form its in; it has the currency value, and therefore should be taken as a real crime.
And it really shouldn't take _that_ much man-power-time to get the kids who did it..
It wasn't a random call for anarchy, merely an observation. In any society, authority (or lack thereof) exists on a scale with total self-reliance (anarchy/minarchy) on one end, and total dependence on the state (totalitarianism/fascism/whatever) at the other extreme. As you remove force or authority from one side, it is naturally balanced by the other.
And yes, I'm saying the government should not have a total monopoly. Generally speaking, use of force should be delegated to government in some instances. If only because many people lack the will or stomach to project their own sovereign authority. This is typically referred to as a "necessary evil." However, when the state has a total monopoly of force, authority is ultimately projected as deadly force (implied, threatened, or otherwise) by armed agents of the state. Whereas within the private sector, force can take the form of capital/debt, overall market forces, social pressure, etc.. as well as physical force.
Naturally, the state can use these types of force as well, but they still end up being enforced through the barrel of a gun. It can at times be desirable for the state to intervene when private recourse fails. This should be used sparingly though to prevent the state from growing too attached to the power, and so the people don't become entirely subordinate to the state.
In this case, as GP pointed out, the conflict could have been just as easily resolved by the game's host. Such action would be a matter of basic contract law, which requires neither state nor anarchy. ;)